


The Sky'll Be There Waiting

by sterlinglee



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Karasuno ensemble cast, Team Bonding, Team Feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-13
Updated: 2014-04-13
Packaged: 2018-01-19 04:17:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1455088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sterlinglee/pseuds/sterlinglee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the last day of summer training camp, Karasuno's players sneak out onto the roof for some ill-advised stargazing.  Something metaphorical might be going on, but that's the upperclassmen's business--the only thing on Hinata's mind is winning the next game and the game after that.  </p><p>The sheer size of the night sky isn't a threat tonight--it's a promise.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sky'll Be There Waiting

Tanaka and Nishinoya are the instigators, and this surprises absolutely no one. They go for Hinata first, Tanaka shaking him almost-gently awake in the darkened room. He squirms and pops up from the mess sheets on his futon, hair springing in sunny, lopsided curls around his ears.

“Eh, Tanaka-san, what is it? Is there a fire?” He smacks his lips and yawns, glancing around the dark room. It’s the last night of summer training camp, and Karasuno’s volleyball team is sprawled in varying states of utter knockout on their own futons. The floor is a minefield of tangled teenage limbs, and the air conditioner hums lazily from the window, competing with the sound of late-summer crickets.

Noya snickers, appearing from out of the darkness at Hinata’s elbow. “Nah man, it’s fine! Get up, we’re gonna sneak out onto the roof!”

“Hmm? What’s going on?” Sugawara sits up slowly. His eyes are still shut, but his head swings towards the sound of their voices. Tanaka and Nishinoya share an apprehensive look, but Noya gives a sharp nod and scrambles forward nimbly among the outflung arms and legs of their teammates. 

“Don’t freak out, Suga-san! Since it’s our last night of training camp, me and Ryu and Shouyou thought we should all sneak out and sit on the roof. You gotta come, we need you to get Daichi-san on board. It’ll be awesome.” Suga blinks dazedly in the onrush of words, and Hinata perks up at his promotion from recruit to founding member of the scheme.

Suga yawns, so wide it looks a little painful, and favors them with a mild, sleepy look. He holds it until Tanaka is fidgeting on his haunches and Nishinoya is worrying his bottom lip. Finally he shrugs and smiles ruefully. “Team-building exercise, huh? Do you have a good route to get past Coach?”

“Yeahhh!” Tanaka and Noya whisper-shout together, exchanging a double high five over Hinata’s drooping head. 

Sugawara winces, his smile growing in spite of himself. “Just—let me be the one to wake Daichi.” Their captain is bundled tight in his bedding, futon pushed right up against Suga’s. Only his dark head pokes out, and his snores are frankly a little alarming. 

“Ah, we’re going to break the rules?” Hinata says, catching on. He gets his bearings quickly, struggling out of his tangled sheets to bounce lightly on his toes. “I get it, it’s like a rite of passage! How cool!”

“I like your attitude, Shouyou!” Nishinoya stretches up to give him a friendly noogie, and Suga chuckles gently. Meanwhile, Tanaka is showing a rare sense of self-preservation in avoiding Tsukishima, opting to wake Yamaguchi and the huddle of snoring second-years first. No one asks him to do it, but all the same, Hinata picks his way over to Kageyama.

Karasuno’s star setter sleeps like a rock, with a faint scowl on his face that seems more force of habit than anything else. Hinata prods his teammate, shakes him gently, finally loses patience and jabs him in the ribs with two rigid fingers. The resulting head-to-nose collision doesn’t give him a nosebleed, but Kageyama is glaring at him like he plans to finish the job. Across the room, Tsukishima has been roused by the movement around him and is rising unsteadily to tower over a nervous Yamaguchi.

“What.” Kageyama says flatly, his voice blurry with sleep. His glare is probably going to give Hinata radiation poisoning, but there’s a hell of a yawn trying to work its way out. It forces Kageyama into some pretty amusing expressions as he tries to fight it off, but in the end it’s a losing battle. “Whatever you’re going to say, I can already tell it’s gonna piss me off,” the setter mumbles before giving in, “so just— _aah_ —hurry up.”

“T-Team building activity,” Hinata blurts, ignoring Suga’s raised eyebrow. “We’re gonna sneak out onto the roof!”

“And who came up with—oh. Yeah. Of course.” Kageyama isn’t quite rude enough to confront his upperclassmen, but his disapproval is clear. Noya sticks his tongue out. 

“Cheer up, Kageyama-kun,” Suga says, in that way he has that’s somewhere between sunshine and pure steel. Kageyama hunches his shoulders, but as he takes in the way Hinata is still bouncing on the balls of his feet, Tsukishima groping blindly for his glasses, Asahi fumbling his hair into a ponytail, his expression gradually clears.

Suga looks down at the futon next to his, and for an instant his expression is uncertain. But he crouches beside Daichi’s sleeping form and takes him gently by the shoulder, not shaking, just rocking him a little. “Daichi,” he says firmly. “Daichi, wake up.”

Daichi sits up with a grunt and stares blankly into the dark, his gaze growing more alert as he registers each of them. “Ah. Everyone’s up. Why is that?” he says calmly. Asahi twitches.

After a brief silence, Tanaka puffs out his chest and steps forward to explain, Noya looking at him the way soldiers watch a comrade throw himself on an armed grenade. “We’re gonna sneak out onto the roof, Daichi-san!” he says in a tense whisper. “There’s snacks and the weather’s pretty nice! Since, you know, we’ll be heading home tomorrow morning and this is our last day at camp!”

Suga stays crouching next to Daichi. “We can sleep on the bus back tomorrow,” he says soothingly. “Everyone’s already up, so why not? It’ll be fun.”

Daichi smiles at an invisible point somewhere between Suga’s head and the ceiling, and the room suddenly seems a lot colder. “You’ve planned this in advance, I see.” No one knows what to say to that, but as Tanaka looks to be gearing up for another save attempt, Suga pats Daichi briskly on the shoulder and half-hauls, half-boosts him to his feet.

“There’s not much use trying to change everyone’s minds now,” he says kindly. “And really, where's the harm?”

Daichi grunts and scrubs a hand across his bleary face. “You know Coach will have our asses if we get caught.” It’s not a _no_ , though, and the team lets out a collective breath.

“Yeahhh!” Nishinoya pumps his fist, but thankfully remembers to keep his voice down. “Let’s _do_ this.”

He and Tanaka lead the rest of the team out the door and down the hall of the cramped training camp bungalow. Tsukishima snaps at Yamaguchi as he has his foot stepped on for the third time in a row, and Asahi lets slip a few unmanly whimpers at the sounds and shifting shadows in the hall. But despite the stumbling and bickering, they manage not to wake the dragon that is a sleep-deprived Coach Ukai. 

Noya slips the bolt on the equipment storage room at the back of the building, and ushers his teammates through. Hinata pads through a pale square of moonlight falling from the high rear window, drowsiness conquered for the time being. Kageyama is drifting dozily in his wake, resigned now to his role in the proceedings.

“Asahi-san, hold this for a sec.” Tanaka deposits a canvas bag full of juice boxes and snacks in the ace’s arms, and reaches up to unlatch the window. In an instant, Nishinoya is up on his shoulders, and he boosts the libero through. Noya’s bare feet swing and vanish above the top of the sill. “There’s a ledge right up there to grab onto, and it leads right onto the roof,” he says, by some miracle still managing to keep his voice down. “Hinata, your turn.”

As Hinata scrambles and steadies himself in Tanaka’s cupped hands, Suga and Kageyama move forward automatically to spot his climb. Daichi’s there too; he smirks a little as Hinata plants a hand firmly on Tanaka’s buzzed head to get in reach of the windowsill. “S-sorry!”

“Ugh—just hurry it up.” All this in whispers, no rounded echo of impact or squeaking sneakers to compete against. It’s strange to not have to shout, and there’s no room for their voices to rise and ring out under this low roof. But they’re in sync anyway, soft measured breaths and words of encouragement as Yamaguchi and Ennoshita climb and pull Kinoshita and Narita up after. Both setters, Tanaka, and Asahi make their way up next, hands reaching over the roof ledge to pull them up into the night air.

Daichi glances at Tsukishima in amusement, accepting the leg up and the disgruntled stare that comes with it. “I’ll give you a hand when I get up there,” he says as if it’s settled, and from up in the night above there’s a burst of Yamaguchi’s laughter and a quiet scuffling of feet.

Tsukishima glances up at the sound. Daichi throws him a knowing look with just a hint of challenge, and pulls himself up and out the window. Tsukishima follows with a soft snort of resignation, long limbs spanning the gap easily. Daichi anchors him on the hoist from sill to roof, and then then the whole team is out under the sky together.

“Haha, nice one! We made it!” Tanaka and Nishinoya launch another round of mutual celebration, at near to full volume this time, but Daichi drops a heavy hand on each of their shoulders and spins them both to face him. They quiet almost immediately, but their eyes are alight. He pretends to yawn just to cover the grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. 

Suga comes up behind him and says, “Let’s sit facing away from the road. It’s darker that way. Easier to see the stars.”

Legs dangling over the edge of the roof, Kageyama stares at the hill behind the gym like he’s trying to set it on fire with his not unremarkable powers of concentration. He presses his lips together with a little growl of frustration, and everybody knows what he’s thinking. Their penalty runs have probably worn this hill down by a few good centimeters.

“I think I was dreaming about running up that hill before you woke me,” Yamaguchi murmurs. “Just my feet moving and moving but I don’t think I was getting anywhere…?”

He might have been about to say something else, but Hinata makes a sudden noise of delight. When they look at him, he’s standing with his face turned upwards and his mouth open. He spreads his arms out “We’re higher up that I thought! I don’t see as many stars here as there are at home, but I feel like they’re just—” he rises on his toes for a moment and drops, arms swinging loosely at his sides. “It’s like they’re right over my head.”

Sitting between Suga and Asahi, Daichi leans back on his hands and looks up. His face is thoughtful. “Good eyes, Hinata. The city lights can make them hard to see sometimes.”

“Ah, yeah, I guess so…?” Hinata tips his head curiously. Then he shakes himself all over, like a dog bounding joyfully out of a puddle. “Well, whatever! When we get back, we’re gonna own that tournament!”

Glancing up at him, Suga grins and rests his elbows on his thighs. Leaning out over the edge of the roof, he watches Kageyama stare thoughtfully at the hill. To Kageyama’s right, Tanaka sighs gustily and flattens his juice box between both hands. Nishinoya crouches at his side, the wind stirring his hair, a fierce expectant look in his eyes.

Tskuishima has his legs neatly crossed, back straight. He doesn’t seem to be looking at much, but the faint quirk of his lips says he’s pleased about something or other. Yamaguchi is sprawled on his back, eyes half-lidded, glancing sidelong at his friend. Ennoshita has drooped onto one of his classmates’ shoulders and is snoring gently.

“This is what we’ll take with us, then,” Suga decides quietly. Asahi and Daichi turn to him with matching curious expressions, and he smiles at them with all the warmth he’s feeling. They smile back, because they’ve never been able to _not_ respond. “This climb, this is what we’ll remember when we go to the spring prelims. Like Hinata said, the stars are close tonight.”

Daichi gets it first. His easy expression drops into something weightier, more serious, but his smile doesn’t fade. He jerks his chin up. “Yeah. Yeah, let’s do that.”

Asahi laughs ruefully. “Before the Inter-High…I thought you guys didn’t want to make any dramatic vows?”

“Moron, that’s because you were going to jinx us by talking about how it was our last chance,” Daichi says good-naturedly, reaching around to cuff Asahi on the back of the head. “This is different. It’s not about endings.”

“More stars up there than we can count, after all,” Suga says a little dreamily.

Daichi grins and knocks his shoulder against Suga’s. “You get sappy when you’re tired. Hinata’s right, we’re gonna own that tournament.”

Suga sways and bumps him right back, and he leans with it to push against Asahi. A little ways down the roof, Tanaka laughs at something Nishinoya’s said, and it looks like Yamaguchi has fallen asleep again. Next to Kageyama, Hinata finally sits, but his gaze is still focused upward as he swings his feet in the free air. The dark wing of night sweeps wide overhead. 

At their backs, the road is silent, but tomorrow they’ll be piling onto the bus together—at the foot of another long climb, another hard run. It’s a hell of a distance, but the sky above is looking clear.

**Author's Note:**

> actually my first hq fic, written to celebrate these volleyball dorks getting their own anime. good old training arcs, full of metaphors for me to blow wildly out of proportion.


End file.
